Music

Chad Cooper, a 45-year-old former managing director at Deutsche Bank in New York, left that lucrative job to become executive director of the conservatory, 121 years old but at that point nearly insolvent. And he seems to have rescued the BCM, which brings the only music lessons available to hundreds of public school students and provides music therapy to 1,500 clients, including seniors with dementia and children with autism. — Fast Company

Said company CEO Stuart Murphy, “We were founded on the belief that opera is for everyone. Removing cost as a barrier to entry for under-18s is a seismic leap forward for ENO and for opera as a whole.” There are two hitches, though … — The Guardian

Outrage — the hallmark of 21st-century discourse — still exists, but the radio flip-flop on banning indicates the paradigm may be shifting toward a reasonable middle ground, with space for the sorts of varied responses one hopes for in a debate that is in theory black and white but, in practicality, is filled with shades of grey. – Toronto Star

“There is a school of thought in contemporary classical music that music should be above everything else, that it should have a purity about it. To me, that doesn’t make sense. Everything we do in art comes from what’s around us and who we are as humans.” – NewMusicBox

“Throughout my childhood, my family had missed out on the joys of sharing music with one another. With three kids, two parents, two loud TVs, one bathroom and rarely anything approaching silence, music served as each individual’s private escape. How surprising to realize that my father had subscribed to our secret club all along. We had never listened to opera before that brief time in our lives. And after my father died, the opera music exited quietly. Pavarotti had left the building.” – The New York Times

The violinist, who won a MacArthur “genius” grant this year, has decided to leave his seat as one of the orchestra’s first violins. He said, “The L.A. Phil saved my life when I was a 19-year-old kid. It was the way that I was able to continue being a musician and to continue growing as an artist. … And I’m really excited to take that artistry beyond Los Angeles and beyond the work of being in an orchestra.” – Los Angeles Times

What happened to Verdi? He used to be on Italian money (back when the lira existed), and now there’s a festival – but there’s also a huge argument between dozens of Verdi fans. Which political party and movement can claim the composer? –Los Angeles Review of Books

Surprisingly, the premiere led to perplexed disappointment. Listeners agreed that the music was magnificent, but many did not hear anything “American” in it, after all. “Some of those who applauded most loudly,” wrote one Brooklyn critic, “thought the Indian and Negro themes would have been as effective if picked up in Siberia.” – The New York Times

We think we’ve learned not to overlook outsiders. Yet the orchestral scene today remains in thrall to safety. It favours those who’ve studied with the right people, at the right schools and universities and have the right profile and publishers. Composing in the approved idioms is always preferred over something more raw, exploratory, problematic or new. Look at the recent major orchestral commissions, or the annual Proms new music programme. – The Guardian

Alex Ross goes home to Washington, D.C. to watch Ma’s “day of action,” the meetings with students and community members in poor neighborhoods (in this case, Anacostia) that he combines with each concert appearance in his 36-city Bach Project. — The New Yorker

On the consumer side, streaming and social-media platforms have transformed the nature of music discovery, which was previously more proactive by necessity—requiring manual effort to open up a newspaper, dig through crates at a record store, or attend a live show. Nowadays, “discovery” can be as easy and passive as scrolling mindlessly through a personalized feed or shuffling an algorithmically -curated playlist in the background of a holiday party, without help from a critic or other human guide. Because of its inherently passive nature, algorithmic curation has also made one core function of criticism defunct. – Columbia Journalism Review

Continuing its recovery from the crises of a few years ago, the DSO announced its sixth balanced budget in a row. Box office revenue rose by 1%, the popular neighborhood concerts were renewed for five more years, and the “Live from Orchestra Hall” webcasts were seen by 400,000 people. — Detroit News

“About 10 percent more young people caught an SPCO concert than the year before, according to a new annual report. Those young concertgoers are a big focus for the nonprofit: Since 2016, the chamber orchestra has lured school and college students with free tickets. The number of unique households attending, too, hit a record high in the fiscal year ending in 2018.” — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Since 1986, the Hall has added 323 inductees to its rolls; they include 220 performers, 33 “early influencers” (a category largely composed of rock and roll’s African-American founding mothers and fathers, such as Lead Belly, Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and 34 non-performers (generally music-industry executives, but also songwriters, producers and instrument makers). – NPR

The 105,000-square-foot building, at Mercer Street and Fourth Avenue North next to McCaw Hall, is designed to allow people to take a peek behind the scenes, with walls of glass allowing the public to see performances and lectures in progress, and a viewing garden where people can watch those at work in the costume shop. – Seattle Times

“The first issue was published 25 years ago this month and distributed in bathroom stalls at the Metropolitan Opera. Now its writers are credentialed press at the Met.” Joshua Barone looks at the history of Parterre Box and talks to its founder and doyenne, James Jorden (aka La Cieca). — The New York Times

The budget shortfall for fiscal 2018 was $1.3 million, but that’s down from $4.2 million the previous year. At the orchestra’s main venue, Severance Hall, attendance rose by 8%, while audience numbers for summer concerts at Blossom Music Center were up by 28%. — The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

The letter, published by the Music4EU initiative, describes Brexit as a “significant threat” to the country’s music industry, adding: “Leaving the EU’s customs union, single market, VAT area and regulatory framework (in whole or part) could devastate our global market leadership, and damage our freedom to trade, tour and to promote our artists and our works.” Concerns are also voiced over access to foreign markets and regulation over copyright, before a request to “examine alternative options to maintain our current influence and freedom to trade”. – The Guardian

When Elizabeth Rowe launched her lawsuit against the BSO, it was reported that she is paid less than the (male) principal oboist. How much less? More than $66,000. Geoff Edgers does a deep dive into both this case and the larger issue. — The Washington Post

It was a fateful night circa 1949 in Greeley, Colorado, when Sayyid Qutb — then an Egyptian exchange student, but who went on to become a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood — was scandalized by seeing men and women dance together, with their arms around each other, to this song (he thought it was a little rapey, too), in (worst of all) a church hall. And he drew certain conclusions about America. — Quartz

One Sunday last month, the Boston-area chamber ensemble Mistral was about to begin the third work on its program when 89-year-old Ingrid Christiansen slumped over in her front-row seat. Zoë Madonna reports on what happened next. (She didn’t want to go to the hospital, she wanted to hear the concert.) — The Boston Globe

When refugees flee, or when groups migrate en masse, they (at least try to) take their music with them. But the modern world isn’t kind to public performances of music. Some musicians say that “music, song and dance are vital areas of empowerment, they are part of the foundation of personhood, and should be included among internationally recognised human rights.” – Le Monde

Well, possibly. For instance, rapper Husky has had recent concerts cancelled by the government – and when he performed outside for his audience, he was arrested and convicted. An electronica group whose concerts were also cancelled says, “The order to exert pressure on us is coming from Moscow.” – BBC

The soprano gives a new meaning to diva. Even when her Carnegie Hall debut gets pushed back, oh, 12 years, that’s fine – she “has an Instagram account much like the interior of a very rich, very well traveled, possibly colorblind teenager’s school locker. … She embodies an excess that lies at the molten core of opera, and which spills into the images she unloads online.” – The New York Times

Discounting the utterly depressing yet joyous – and always voted the number 1 Christmas song in the UK – “Fairytale of New York,” even Joni Mitchell admitted, “We needed a sad Christmas song, didn’t we? … In the ‘bah humbug’ of it all.” – The Washington Post

The Seattle Symphony leads all orchestras with three nominations — two for its present music director, Ludovic Morlot, in Aaron Jay Kernis’ traditionally shaped Violin Concerto with soloist James Ehnes (in the classical instrumental solo and contemporary composition categories), and one for its future music director, Thomas Dausgaard, in Nielsen’s Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 (orchestral performance), a strong opening entry for a complete Nielsen cycle. There were no nominations for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has recorded little lately. – Los Angeles Times

“Opera is an incredibly sophisticated art form that’s developed over 500 years. So there’s no one audience. If you want to just sit there without knowing anything about it and watch the pretty pictures with music at the centre, you are allowed to, great. If you want to do two years of research and study the programme and the libretto, great. And if you want to compare it to the 20 other productions that you’ve seen in the last five years, that’s great too.” – Bachtrack

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, adapted by composer Alexander Tchaikovsky (no relation) and led from the podium by Ignat Solzhenitsyn (principal guest conductor of the Moscow Symphony and conductor laureate of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia), “[is] staged in the round in the Bolshoi’s chamber theatre [and] sees prison guards patrol balconies behind barbed wire and searchlights roam the orchestra pit.” — Yahoo! (AFP)

“The M-Prize, a chamber music competition with $100,000 grand prize [and $200,000 in total awards], based at the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD) in Ann Arbor, will not be returning for a fourth edition in 2019. … It was launched by Sphinx Organisation founder Aaron Dworkin, who had then [in 2015] just been appointed dean of the SMTD. His tenure was shortlived, however, and it is speculated that the M-Prize was always unlikely to survive without his patronage and fundraising network.” — The Strad

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